Harddog said:
We often do things, not realizing there could be a better way. It's funny how things evolve.
People rode horses for quite a while before someone invented the stirrup.
The stirrup was invented surprisingly late in history, considering that horses were used for bareback riding and to pull carts or war chariots since the fourth millennium BC.
Stirrups changed the basic tactics of mounted warfare and made cavalry more important. Braced against the stirrups, a knight could deliver a blow with a lance that employed the full weight and momentum of horse and rider together. The addition of stirrups also allowed a rider to use a longer (and vastly more powerful) bow by standing up on the stirrups.
Lynn White Jr., in Medieval Technology and Social Change (1966) suggested that the rising feudal class structure of the European Middle Ages derived ultimately from the use of stirrups: "Few inventions have been so simple as the stirrup, but few have had so catalytic an influence on history. The requirements of the new mode of warfare which it made possible found expression in a new form of western European society dominated by an aristocracy of warriors endowed with land so that they might fight in a new and highly specialized way."
It's never too late to learn a new technique.
